The Case of Pets

As I said before, I'm not a total animal rights activist. And one position that extremist animal rights activists--usually those who identify themselves as militant vegans--take that terrifies me is the idea that owning a pet is the equivalent of keeping a slave and they should all be released into the wild where they belong.

As previously stated, I'm not a complete animal-rights activist. In fact, I have even decided that I will be referred to as a "3/4 animal-rights activist". The idea that in a perfect world there is no interaction with animals is simply a scary thought.

Four thousand plus years ago, that would have been a mildly okay idea. After all, that was when pets weren't really domesticated. They were still wild animals that humans decided it would be fun to keep around and own. Now, on the other hand, there is a totally different story. Humans have adapted dogs and cats into breeds that just wouldn't make it in the wild.

For example, what use would a herding dog be if humans were just supposed to herd on their own? I'm sure that some of these dogs know how to hunt, but their natural urges would be suspended. It's the same with lapdogs, but some of those don't even have hunting-type bodies or fur. Have you seen the Puli? Those dreadlocks wouldn't be able to stand a type of forest environment.

It's the same type of thing with cats. The Minskin is a breed of cat with ridiculously short legs and no fur. I don't know what type of environment that cat would survive in. Some of them don't even have dachshund bodies, which are long and made for badgers. Even if they did, those badgers live in areas that can get pretty cold in the winter, which you would need fur to get through.

So sorry militant vegans, but a world without pets is a world where many dogs and cats would die.

It's THAT Time of Year Again

It's horse racing season again, and that means that all around the world beautiful equines are going to be whipped into running faster than the ones around them. The only sport that horse racing is better than is greyhound racing, because there is even less done to help the greyhounds than the horses.

1.5 horses die out of every 1,000 starts at Thoroughbred courses in America. The U.S. Jockey Club estimates that in 2006 alone, 600 horses died on the tracks. The United States is clearly the worst offender: in Hong Kong, there are only .58 deaths out of every 1,000 starts. This is believed to be a result of the drugs used in American horse racing that are banned in every other country.

Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, between 50 and 100 racehorses were insured against death, accident, or disease, and were then slaughtered so the owners could collect the insurance money. This included Henry the Hawk, whose owner's father collected US$150,000 when he killed his daughter's horse. In addition, Helen Brach was killed because she threatened to report the horse killers to the authorities.

And then there's greyhound racing, which I mentioned earlier. The majority of racing greyhounds have some kind of tooth problem, and nobody knows the true cause, though they certainly speculate. Due to lack of proper treatments for prevention, most greyhounds also have parasites. Doping is even worse in greyhound racing than it is in horse racing.

Fortunately, greyhounds who are beyond their racing years are now being adopted. Before adoption began, 20,000 greyhounds a year were being killed because they had not performed well enough at the tracks to breed. However, some people dispute the high adoption figures given by the National Greyhound Association, and the NGA even released a statement saying that they don't now what happens to many greyhounds. Sometimes they are sold to laboratories for experimentation, and one man alone in northeastern England killed 10,000 greyhounds. One man.

Fortunately, these grisly sports are losing their popularity and, within a matter of years, should either be improved or gone.

The Michael Vick Law

Michael Vick, a known dog fighter, bought a puppy and was allowed to. This sickens me to my stomach, and it can be so easily fixed:

Make a law that would make it illegal for someone convicted of any animal cruelty offence (whether just beating them or fighting them) to purchase or adopt an animal, especially the one that they were convicted of abusing.

This is a mind-numbingly simple solution that will solve all kinds of problems: there is no chance that the convict will be able to legally obtain an animal that s/he could abuse, the convict learns responsibility for their actions, and the media will not be in an uproar when a dog fighter strolls out the door of a shelter with a brand-new puppy.

Of course there are still problems: the life of a fighting dog may not be glamorous, but certainly it would be better than one getting euthanized? Wrong. Fighting dogs are taken young, and so any family would be eager to take it and give it a loving home. Instead, its tail and ears are docked without anesthesia and it is taught how to be aggressive. If the animal is "saved" from the dog fighting, it may be too aggressive to trust humans and will have to be euthanized then.

And then there's the uproar from the pro-dog fighters. Vick actually got support for training dogs to basically kill each other. Apparently dog fighting is like hunting. In the latter, humans go out into the woods for pure sport and attempt to show their skill by killing an animal that is plentiful and wild. The meat is usually either eaten directly or given to someone to eat, and the skin can be used for clothing or economical purposes through taxidermy. (I'm not endorsing hunting, mind you. I'm sure that will be a lengthy rant soon). In the former, a puppy is taken and trained to kill anything its sight. One day when it grows up it will face something bigger and stronger and will be killed. The body is thrown away and another dog is raised for the same fate. Sounds exactly the same to me.

Another argument for dog fighting is that it's a dog fighter's business if he wants to pit two canines against each other for money. But the thing is, when it involves another living thing and the difference between life and death, it isn't his business anymore. It becomes a case of right and wrong. If he got it from a specific shelter, it becomes the business of a shelter when they learn that somebody is using one of their animals for malevolent purposes. It becomes the problem of those that the dog comes into contact with during the brutal training process. Bottom line, it's not just his business if he wants to raise animals to kill.

Yet another argument is that dogs fighting will happen. Yes, but there is a difference between two feral dogs who have never known humans fighting each other over a scrap of meat and a dog with a home being beaten into submission and learning to hate and attack living things. In the former, the dog knows that this is the way of life and how they will live. In the latter, they were forcibly made to believe that at a young age.

These arguments are inherently flawed and show a lack of respect for all forms of life. If we simply add the law above, everything would be better.

(P.S. How's that for a lengthy rant?)

The Only Beasts of the Southern Wild are the Humans

I'm not a total animal-rights activist. I support zoos licensed by the AZA, and I eat turkey burgers--quite frequently, actually. But I'm also opposed to circuses, wouldn't eat a cow, deer, or pig to save my life, and am firmly opposed to hunting, furs, and irresponsible breeders. Last night I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild after getting it on Netflix to see for myself what it was like and was horribly distressed at what I saw.

I assume you're familiar with the story, since, you know, it was nominated for Best Picture, the little girl (Quvenzhane Wallis) was the youngest person to be nominated for Best Actress, yadda yadda. If not, let me recap: A girl named Hushpuppy (Wallis) lives with her abusive father in the Bathtub, a Louisiana bayou community. A storm comes and all hell breaks loose. People die. Homes are flooded. Meanwhile, Hushpuppy's father is dying and creatures called "aurochs" (which actually existed; however, the movie portrays them as fuzzy, carnivorous boars; in real life, they were gentle cows) are invading.

The aurochs were the only CGI animals, however. In one scene, Hushpuppy's father is showing her how to fish with her hands. He pulls a fish out of the water and shows her how to hit it on the head. In other scenes, giant amounts of fish and lobster are shown writhing with piles of each other around. An owl is shown in a cage. A horse is tied to a tree. Random chickens are squeezed by Hushpuppy and held to her head. Two crabs, already dead, are broken in half and have the juice sucked out of them. Multiple alligators are shown and killed, including one being put into something reminiscent of butterfly shrimp. They have little to no purpose in the story. This was merely to give it a few extra minutes so that it actually looked like a movie instead of a too-long short film.

I'd rather it be a too-long short film.